Spring, and a Man in Yellow

Yes, I know, I've been a slacker about blogging lately.  However, I have a perfectly viable excuse in the form of a rather nasty cold which has been plaguing me this week.  So basically I've been coming home from work each day to roam about in a fog, blowing my nose and grunting in a truly unattractive way, which doesn't really make for good blogging material.


We've had beautiful weather the past few days, and it really looks like spring is on its way at last.  For additional proof, when I went to pay our utility bill at City Hall I saw crocuses coming up in their flower beds.  The sight of them made bill-paying much more thrilling than usual.  Aaron and I have also been planning our garden... or rather, standing in the middle of the backyard pointing and saying, "we should put these over there, or maybe against the fence."  This is very exciting.  We moved into the house too late last year to plant much of anything, and before that we lived in an upstairs apartment.  I'm looking forward to getting my hands in the dirt again.


On the writing front, I'm still working on the new novel, though it has been moving rather slowly again thanks to the busyness of life in general.  I did send a (very) short story to the 100 Words Or Less contest, which is a first for me, so we'll see how that goes.  I haven't done much with short stories lately, but I'd been playing around with this one since the autumn.  I'll be a good blogger and paste it below.  It all started with an incredibly surreal moment last September when I was out for a walk.  I glanced down a side-street and saw a man dressed all in yellow (yellow pants, yellow shirt, everything) standing under a tree with leaves of nearly the exact same color.  Who knows where the rest came from.

Recurring Dream

In my dream there are three of us: you, me, and the man dressed in yellow.  Though he might have been a tree.  Might have been, but wasn’t.

We say we are looking for an elephant.  A small one -- or a kangaroo.

He says he saw an elephant once, in Portugal.  But it might have been a large dog.  Kangaroos now, he’s never seen those.

You ask, “Was the elephant in a zoo?”

He says, “No, it was on a street in Lisbon; playing a concertina.”

You take my hand, adventure in your eyes, and just then, my dream dies.

Health, Life... and the Lost Elephant's Leg

I had my annual cancer check yesterday and came away with a clean bill of health.  Eight years now, going on nine.  Somehow that makes me feel old in a way turning twenty-five doesn't.  It's weird to go back now.  My oncologist is the same, just as kind, with his cheerful briskness and Indian accent -- only a little greyer.  One nurse is still the same, and one receptionist.  The rest have all changed.  I walk in with my husband and remember being there with my mother and Rhiannon.  The smell doesn't make me sick anymore.  I barely notice it now, that sanitary smell.  For years I couldn't walk into a hospital or doctor's office, or even catch a whiff of my mom's antibacterial hand lotion, without getting nauseous.  Every two weeks I would go into that office and spend five hours in a chair, while a steady stream of poisonous fluid was pumped into me by IV.  Small wonder I developed an aversion to the smell.  Such an odd thing, chemotherapy.  The idea of keeping a person alive by slowly killing them and hoping the thing that was killing them before dies before they do.  Oddly enough, it works better than any other system we've concocted seems to.


It sounds awful, and yes, okay, it was.  But there were good moments too, though it's hard now to explain them.  Rhiannon and I would always try to make the nurses and doctors laugh.  After my hair fell out, Rhiannon shaved her head as well, and the next time we went in she wore a wig and I had a scarf on.  Then when we went into the exam room we switched, and she sat on the table and I put on the wig and sat in the chair.  Then the doctor came in and we got the best double-take ever out of him.


It is weird to go back, but nice too.  I am one of their success stories.  Fun to hear the doctor and the nurse who remembers me tell the newer staff members that I am their poster child.  I am also the reason they take extra precautions, though that is more of a position of infamy than anything else.


There is a shot they give you the day after your treatment, designed to boost your white blood cells and make you more resistant to infection, since chemo really devastates your immune system.  It was fairly new when I was beginning treatments, and all the talk was about how wonderful it was, how it allowed you more of a normal life while you were going through treatments.  Anyway, I got it, and we headed for home.  About an hour later found me being rushed to the ER, mostly unconscious and with plummeting blood pressure.  Nobody had ever heard of anyone reacting to that drug before.  To my knowledge no one else ever has.  I ask, every year, if any other similar things have happened, and the answer is always no... but they religiously keep everyone in the office for a set amount of time after their first shot, just in case.  So that is my legacy.  I had hoped to become famous for some great literary endeavor.  Instead I will go down in history for my weird drug allergies.  Still, I feel a strange sort of (is it pride?) something when I see a television commercial for Neulasta, and hear them mutter very quickly at the end, "In extremely rare cases, a severe allergic reaction may occur as a result of taking Neulasta."


Anyway, going back always gives me a new appreciation for life, for breath, for the energy in my arms and legs, and for them -- for my wonderful doctor and nurses.  It can't be easy to work in such a place, surrounded constantly by death or the threat of it.  They need us, I think, the ones who lived, to remind them why they do it.


Oh, and about the elephant in the title: one of my lucky elephant earrings has lost a leg.  I don't know how, poor thing... but perhaps a three-legged elephant will bring me even more luck.

Remedy for a Bad Day

I'm somewhat ashamed to state that I've been rather grumpy lately, the combined result of a cough which refuses to leave me in peace even after a month and another form rejection which arrived recently.  En route home after work today I realized that this must stop.  Eight years ago I was in the midst of a stint of chemotherapy, had lost my hair and had two life-threatening allergic reactions to the drugs that were supposed to keep my immune system strong.  Yet I remember that being one of the most peaceful times of my life.  Weird, no?  People talk about living for the moment, but you never realize what that means until the moment really is all you have.  Somehow, at sixteen I was able to place my future, my life or my death, in the hands of God, and enjoy what I had.  Shakespeare was right, "the readiness is all".  Life or death, to be ready for either... and when I found out it was to be life, it was almost harder to get used to, because I'd all but forgotten how to plan for the future.  And now I get myself out of sorts because of a cough and the whims of a literary agent I've never met.  Have I forgotten?  Not entirely.  I still enjoy the simple things.  I still weave my life into a fairy tale of my own creation, and if the villains are a little darker, well, the heroes are a little brighter, for what is the measure of a hero if not the strength of the foes he has vanquished.  It is only a little harder sometimes to remember, so I am making a list of good things about today.


1.  The weather.  It's the end of Autumn.  You can feel the approach of snow.  The Mountain Ash berries are so bright they almost glow.  


2.  The patch of Sweet Alysium I found under a hedge on my walk home, still fresh and sweet-smelling after all this cold weather.


3.  My iTunes playlist... an interesting mix of Simon and Garfunkel, Giori, Beats Antique, The Weepies, The Killers, Jeremy Fisher,  Duke Special, John Tams and others, along with selections from Blood Brothers, Phantom of the Opera, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode, Once More With Feeling.


4.  My delicious mug of tea, and the slice of birthday cake left over from Aaron's birthday party last night.


5.  Last night's birthday party belongs here too, even if it's not technically part of today.  Good times with great people.


6.  The cough, while still in evidence, did not wake me up at all last night.  Hurrah for a good night's sleep!


7.  My wonderful husband, lovely parents, and excellent sister, not to mention a whole parcel of friends, near and far, who make life interesting at all times.


8.  The new novel, which is finally coming together in my mind.


9.  Elephants!  Even if there aren't any nearby, just the fact that such a creature exists makes me happy.  Same with giraffes.


10.  Ballet class tonight.


11.  The fact that my moody spell seems to have evaporated.